I get asked this question a lot when debating with other individuals. They posit that without the child labor laws, we would have children working in factories and sweat shops. I suggest that it was capitalism during the industrial revolution that allowed us to move away from this. However, they usually don’t buy this argument.
How do you usually respond?
Child labor was dropping with each decade, so it is a statistical fact. The unfortunate thing is that I cannot recall which chart you can use. It is usually highly agrarian economies that have large amounts of back breaking child labor not industrialized ones. For some reason people nostalgically glorify farm labor (not easy work at all) and demonize industrial labor, especially when it comes to children.
Children did get hurt in factories but this had alot more to do with the technology of the time. Adults faced far more dangers (as they should) in the factory due to the types of work between children and adults. Children usually did very simple tasks that were far less dangerous. I am not trying to say child labor is great since I am glad that the developed worlds economies have progressed beyond it but it is interesting to compare child labor in factories with the dangers of being killed by an animal on the farm or the various sharp tools that they had to use when harvesting the crop, not to mention the overall lower level of consumption goods and higher amount of hours one had to put in for a lower standard of living.
Some of the harm of industrialization was increased by “primitive accumulation” as Karl Marx put it. This was when the aristocrats of Europe pushed people off the lands of their ancestors thereby leaving them with nothing at all. They then had to settle for awful conditions in the new factories since the land they could have used as some form of capital was taken from them. Before these periods of land clearing, manufacturing jobs paid a handsome amount in order to attract labor.
Capitalism and the Historians by F.A Hayek is a great book dealing with the child labor issue if you want to read more about it.
My response is that children preferred to work in factories instead of going to school, and this is why there are now child imprisonment laws.
Just look at the history behind the laws. The first National child labor laws (in the US) were passed during the Great Depression in 1938, yet the amount of children in the workforce had been going steadily downhill since the mid-1800s. When Congress passed the law only about 6% of children were in the workforce and 75% of them worked on farms with their parents (Which is still legal today). Congress had two reasons: One, to make the New Deal look more successful by eliminating sectors of the workforce and magically the percentage of unemployed decreases. Two, to take credit for ridding the US of something that wasn’t very popular, making themselves look better.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.childlabor
Child labor goes down the wealthier a society becomes, the less child labor becomes necessary for the families to survive the more that can be spent on education.
Lastly, if a child wishes to work, who are you or anyone (beside potential employers), to say he cannot?
Just for fun, without child labor we’d never have Jack Daniels whiskey. Jack Daniels started working at a distillery at age 7 at age 14 he bought the place and soon after started marketing his own brand. That may be used as a case against child labor though.
Sweatshops are better than the alternatives available or else people wouldn’t line up to get a job in one. Here is an article explaining this point in further detail.
Thanks everyone for the insights. It’s a tough subject to argue, but I with this info, I am sure my arguments will be stronger.
But the pictures from those nice muckraker people show children with expressions only adults should have. When you look at the small innocent children, they look like adults, full of worry, full of the stress only a person who has aged 18 years exact should have to face. We cant have that! I know, let’s put them in institutions where we require them to do tedious menial things and call it education! Oh, and let’s rob all the dirty property owners so that our institution has some revenue to supply it’s state sanctioned demand.
Wrong – you can not make that claim because you do not know how or whether the free market choices of those children are limited.
This is where a lot of socialists have a good argument. In some third-world countries, people are evicted from their land and then forced to pay taxes. Well, at that point, they have no choice but to work and there is no choice but to work at the factories. These people would probably choose to just get their land back and continue a happy sustenance level of existence.
Free trade usually only exists when it arrives at your retailer. How the product was initially fabricated may not have been through respecting freedom.
Just keep it simple. Tell them that child labor abuse occurred under the state so, it is the state creating the problem. Ask them this: “So, if the state is such a great thing, how did child labor arise anyway???”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I don’t understand why people are trying defending today’s sweatshops.
I basically try to see the whole thing lika a robberer scenario.
Suppose a robberer walks up to a lady and says she now has two options: one is to give him all of her money, and the other one is to die. The lady chooses to give the robberer the money, of course, which means she does not have to die.
It’s the same way with sweatshops. The state comes in and makes people choose between sweatshops, and the horrors of unemployment (prostitution, death, etc).
Unfortunately, this is where the (vulgar) libertarians come up and say “but sweatshops are good; they keep people from prostitution and provery!”.
To me, this is just like saying “but the option of giving up all your money when being robbed is better than death!”. Well of course it is better, but that doesn’t mean you should defend the option.
So those of you saying sweatshops are good; they are not “good”, they are however better than the current alternative. Don’t, however, try and claim that sweatshops are somehow needed for development and that crap - they are only “needed” because of the state.
Don’t get angry with people hating sweatshops; instead join their ranks and tell them what evil organisation causes sweatshops in the first place!
Sustinence farming is not “happy”. It is a life that is harder than working in “sweatshops” and should not be glamourized. It is grinding poverty to work all day long only to feed yourself. People don’t leave this life simply because “the government stole their land”, they leave it because the alternative is much better. Do you realize that before factories many people lost half of their children to starvation? If you want people to “go back” to that, you are sick.
Says who? I would prefer it.
I am appalled by your anti-libertarian reply.
I am not pretending to know every single ounce of history of every single square inch across the entire planet. Maybe you do?
All I am suggesting to you is that not all industrial development arose through peacefully acquired land and trade. Can you at least understand that one concept? Any single instance where a third world factory arose through violating property rights negates your “international free trade” argument and you abuse the libertarian name.
I do not believe that is an accurate description of the plight of most people. I believe most poverty and starvation is a direct result of humans vioolating the property rights of other humans.
I may be wrong and sick but I try my best to be a libertarian – you can too.
I hope so 
What puzzled me a bit was how the arguments went from the factual topic “child labor” to criminal behavior. I can not see any difference between forced labor of a child and an adult anyway. If theft ist imoral, it doesn’t matter how old the vicitm is,no?
So arguing against child labor by stating it is forced labor seems to me not really helpful. Any forced labor is coercion and thereby a aggression that can not accepted.
Now, having clarified that, what is really different about child labor? I can not see anything.
The first arguments against child labor came up in the early stages of the industrial revolution in England. At that time child mortality (what a nice term for dying of hunger) was huge, especially in the cities like London. Weaving wool was still done in a family environment and did not make enough for survival.
When the factories emerged and where in dyre need for labor, they startet to look for women first. Which led to an outcry of the conservatives (think about what they wanted to conserve… starvation?) who declared women earning their own money would jeopardize the supremacy of the male as head of the family (in which they where right).
When still more labor was in demand, children where employed, and payed, which meant that the mortality rate of children in England felt dramatically.
The only exception where children where abused was by the ,state run, Orphanages. They sold the children to the factories, cashed in the pay and made a nice profit out of those “slaves”. Have a look at Oliver Twist and you will find whom to blame for abusing children. It wasn’t the capitalists, they just payed for the labor delivered. It was those that robbed the children of their rightfully earned property.
Later, child labor was fought by the Unions, not out of compassion for the poor children, but as a means to keep them out of business, as they where, and are, seen as competitors to those organized in them.
I agree it is much more appreciable to have children that are free to choose if they want to work or not, yet, if the options are starvation or work, life is the more valuable item, I think.
And what about our children today, that are forced from age 5 or 6 to work in schools, learning? Isn’t that labor to? If not than academics never labor, and by definition, couldn’t survive in a free market society.
I doubt that very much too